Maria Gaidar from March 28 became freelance adviser President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko

The appointment was formalized by Decree No. 83/2017.

Recall that Maria Gaidar is the daughter of a famous Russian politician Yegor Gaidar - one of the leaders and ideologists of the economic reforms of the early 1990s in Russia, the great-granddaughter of the writer Arkady Gaidar.

Mikhail Saakashvili, being the governor of the Odessa region, invited her to work as his deputy in July 2015. In August 2015, Poroshenko signed a decree granting her citizenship and personally handed over the passport of a citizen of Ukraine.

Gaidar resigned from the Odessa Regional State Administration in May 2016.

Previously, she was engaged in political activities in Russia. In 2005, she received an offer to run for the Moscow City Duma from the Union of Right Forces, but rejected it. Independently nominated for by-elections to the State Duma. Defending the principle of a single candidate from democratic forces, she lost her participation in the elections to Viktor Shenderovich, who was also nominated in this constituency.

Gaidar is an active participant in the Marches of Dissent. On April 14, 2007, she was detained during an attempt to hold a March in Moscow. On November 24, 2007, together with Boris Nemtsov, she officially participated in the March of Dissent from the Union of Right Forces, at which she delivered an anti-Putin speech. During an attempt to smuggle a letter from the organizers of the March to the CEC, despite the status of a candidate for deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, she was detained.

Since 2006 - Member of the Presidium of the Union of Right Forces. In the 2007 Duma elections, he heads the Moscow list of the SPS party. He is a co-author of the election program of the Union of Right Forces. In the elections, according to official data from the CEC, the Moscow list receives the highest SPS result among all other constituencies both in percentage terms and in absolute terms. In 2008, he became a member of the presidium of the political council of the party.

February 18, 2009 became the governor's social adviser Kirov region Nikita Belykh.

From March 26, 2009 - and. about. Deputy Governor of the Kirov Region Belykh for Health and Social Development.

In June 2011, Gaidar announced that she was retiring and going to study at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In December 2012, she became an adviser on a voluntary basis to the Vice Mayor of Moscow for Social Affairs, Pechatnikov, and was involved in healthcare reform in the Russian capital. In November 2013, Gaidar resigned as adviser to the vice-mayor of Moscow on social issues and focused on working in the Social Request foundation she created - for 2015 the foundation received grants from the President of Russia totaling 5 million rubles.

In the spring of 2014, she was nominated by the opposition coalition "For Moscow" as a candidate for the Moscow City Duma in the 43rd constituency (districts: Presnensky, Arbat, Khamovniki). After re-checking the signature lists on July 19, the district electoral committee refused to register Gaidar due to the unacceptable number of invalid and incorrectly executed signatures. On July 31, the Moscow City Court recognized this decision as legal.

The political career of Maria Gaidar in Ukraine began in the summer of 2015 in the team of Mikhail Saakashvili, who shortly before headed the Odessa Regional State Administration. At first she was an adviser to the former president of Georgia, and then his official deputy. The terms of Gaidar's work duties were presented to the public rather vaguely: her competence included the solution of certain social and organizational issues. However, the symbolism of the appointment of a supposedly Russian opposition leader to a public position in Ukraine was too obvious to expect any breakthroughs from it on the labor front. But many people remember the mysterious story of the change of citizenship: in August 2015, at a specially organized ceremony, Poroshenko personally handed Maria a Ukrainian passport, which clearly showed why Kiev needs this whole story. The head of Ukraine instructed the new citizen of the country ... not to lose touch with Russia: "Your unbiased position, thoughts and information from Ukraine as an alternative to Kremlin propaganda are very important for millions of Russians."

The process of renunciation of Russian citizenship was organized with even greater pomp, however, for unknown reasons, it was only in September 2016 that real actions in this direction were taken. By that time, Gaidar had already returned to the status of an adviser to Saakashvili, since she could not hold the post of vice-governor because of the new civil service law that came into force in Ukraine on May 1 of that year. Presumably, few regretted this: even those who sympathize with the Kiev regime noticed that a civil servant in work time excessive visits to Odessa restaurants. Apparently, anticipating such a development of events, the president's team decided in advance to strengthen Gaidar's position and in the fall of 2015, made her a member of the Odessa Regional Council in the local elections, in order to ensure her at least some stable status.

After the conflict between Saakashvili's team and the Poroshenko administration, the former Russian woman found herself in a delicate situation - apparently, this can explain her disappearance from information radars. Gaidar occasionally reminded herself of herself and exclusively in the spirit of “mi-mi-mi”: for example, for the first time in her life she wrote a poem in Ukrainian. However, there was no success on this front either. Those who got acquainted with the “masterpiece” for the most part reacted with sarcastic comments: they finally waited for the successor to the great one, the test of her pen should be fixed in the Ukrainian school curriculum.

Given this “silence regime”, the news about the new status of Gaidar under Poroshenko sounded sensational to a certain extent. There are no intelligible comments on this decision either from herself or from. fuel to the fire of Saakashvili, who claims that Gaidar and other people from his team were persuaded for almost three months. “This means one of two things: either Poroshenko was deceitful when he said that I was ineffective in Odessa, but he himself thinks just the opposite - that we had a super team in Odessa, and he wants to lure its representatives to him; or he is very afraid of me and thinks that I can do much harm to him and tries to leave me without a team,” Saakashvili said.

Ukrainian experts, in their first comments in hot pursuit, also link this move by Poroshenko with the intricacies of the internal political struggle on the eve of the elections. However, this is hardly the only thing. Surely in the camp of the Ukrainian leader came up with a new mission for Gaidar, and there is no doubt that it will be connected with Russia. On the other hand, under Poroshenko there are enough advisers who are not given a “big task”, but who are distinguished by very exotic actions and statements.

Yanukovych's legacy

Perhaps the most odious among all Poroshenko's advisers is, known under the pseudonym Phoenix. At the Euromaidan in Kiev, he joined the process as a medical volunteer, and with the outbreak of hostilities in the Donbass, he organized a large-scale project of logistical assistance for the Ukrainian army. When Poroshenko won presidential elections, he made a logical decision to approach and encourage the most famous volunteers. Thus, Biryukov, who was notable for his activity and critical statements, became his adviser, and in parallel also an assistant to the Minister of Defense. Its main function is "correct" comments in in social networks and the media on current events related to the war in Donbass and front-line topics in general.

Indicative in this sense were the revelations about the coverage of the battles in Debaltseve in the winter of 2015. “On the instructions of Poroshenko, it was necessary to bring confusion into the heads of the enemy for two days ... arrange a surge of “everything is fine, we are standing” on Facebook and keep this wave for at least two days. At any "reputational" price, just straight up lie, lie, lie, ”Biriukov admitted a year later.

Coincidence or not, but shortly after these statements, in April 2016, Poroshenko demoted Phoenix to a freelance adviser. The formal reason was his lack of… higher education(did not finish the Dnepropetrovsk Medical Institute, could not enter the Kiev-Mohyla Academy). However, Biryukov is forgiven a lot for his anti-Russian attacks, the cynicism of which is striking in its outrageousness. One of the latest scandals was associated with the fall of the Russian Tu-154 in December last year. Then Poroshenko's adviser vigorously celebrated this event and, with an extremely transparent hint, offered to take "a bottle of Hawthorn" to the Russian embassy. On the eve of March 8, he got into the Biryukov story, calling the holiday, which may be banned in Ukraine in the near future, “the day of KGB prostitutes”, which was extremely negatively perceived by almost all representatives of the weaker sex, regardless of political views.

According to official information from the Poroshenko administration, today the head of Ukraine has only two full-time advisers: Ruslan Demchenko and Yuriy Bogutsky. The first is a career diplomat who started his career with a four-year job at the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States. Under President Demchenko, he headed one of the offices of his secretariat, worked as a deputy and first deputy head of a diplomatic department. The media give funny details: it turns out that during the presidency of Yanukovych, Demchenko, who is called the gray eminence, personally coordinated the work of Ukrainian diplomats to justify repression against and in the eyes of the Western public and oversaw the Russian direction to the Foreign Ministry. It is also noteworthy that the career peak of the second full-time adviser to the current head of state, Yuri Bogutsky, also fell on the presidency of Yanukovych: he served as chairman of the State Committee of Ukraine on Nationalities and Religions. Apparently, the specifics of the biography can explain the absence of Poroshenko's main advisers in the public field, because otherwise the conversation about lustration cannot be avoided.

Oligarch, bandit, corrupt official…

Among freelance advisers, Poroshenko has a much richer choice. Here, even without Gaidar, there are enough specific characters. One of them is the agrarian oligarch Yuriy Kosyuk, who at one time worked in Poroshenko's administration. He is widely known in Ukraine for his attacks on and calls the notorious FTA (free trade zone) between the EU countries and Ukraine a hoax. “I think we are deceived. For the export of food products from Ukraine, catastrophically large restrictions or quotas are set ... They clearly defended their own interests, and Ukraine lost. Therefore, I believe that the free trade zone, which is very much promoted today, is a deception of Ukraine,” the businessman said in an interview.

Photo: Mikhail Markiv / Pool / Kommersant

In March, a journalistic investigation was published about "Versailles" - a huge palace that Poroshenko's adviser built. The pompous construction began in 2015. “We were shocked when he began to build it on the territory of the archaeological site, close to Feofaniya Park. Everything is ready, and I am even more shocked,” the author of the material states.

Another interesting advisor is former chairman Sevastopol city state administration, ex-chairman of the Crimean government. Of course, he advises Poroshenko on issues related to the Russian peninsula. His reputation is very doubtful: in the Ukrainian Crimea, Kunitsyn was more talked about in connection with various criminal groups and political weathercocks. It is noteworthy that after the coup in Kiev and before the return of Crimea to Russia, he was the permanent representative of the acting. President of Ukraine on the peninsula, but in the end he was fired with the shameful wording "for improper performance of official duties." As far as one can judge from open information, his main task now is the "revival" of the Simferopol football club"Tavria" on Ukrainian territory, in the Kherson region. “As far as I know, there is panic in the Russian and Crimean football unions. So we are on the right track. Because they tried to prove that they only have Crimean football, but it turned out that Ukrainians are reviving Crimean football in Kherson territory, ”he reported news from a parallel reality last fall.

Not without financial scandals in the apparatus of advisers. Former governor of Poroshenko's native Vinnitsa region, people's deputy From the BPP, he looked very organically in the role of an adviser to the president, until anti-corruption activists discovered $ 180 million in illegal income from him, which led to serious showdowns, and then a break in relations between Dombrovsky and the head of state.

It should be noted that the activities of Poroshenko's advisers rarely fall into the spotlight of the Ukrainian media. Practically no one can explain why they received the status of those close to the first person and what exactly they do. The President of Ukraine also never spoke about this. But here we can recall the classics: the retinue plays the king. In this case, it is fully consistent with the situation.

Its activities in the Kirov region are estimated inconsistently. Criticism was caused by the initiative to close part of the feldsher-midwife stations. However, Gaidar claimed that only those points that existed only on paper were closed.

At the same time, many critics noted Gaidar's incompetence and the lack of specialized education, and, accordingly, an understanding of the problems of the healthcare sector.

After returning to Russia for some time, Maria Gaidar was engaged in political and social activities, but, apparently, she realized that relations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation had split the opposition environment and her career prospects in Russia were not great. In Ukraine, Gaidar began her political activities in 2015. Then she became an adviser and then deputy governor of the Odessa region. In August, Petro Poroshenko signed a decree granting her Ukrainian citizenship and personally handed over a Ukrainian passport.

However, Maria Gaidar did not last long in this post - until May 2016. The reason for this was pressure from Ukrainian nationalist organizations because of her dual citizenship, as well as a legislative conflict, in connection with which the possibility of holding a public office with dual citizenship was excluded.

“Take off your kokoshnik, kneel down and ask for forgiveness. You can only cry and drink in the restaurant.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, during working hours, you were at the Mimino restaurant. I am against people like you, and I will go out and do everything to make you leave. You are a disgrace to Saakashvili, you are a disgrace to his team,” one of the representatives of the Ukrainian national movement, Natalia Pranzhu, told her.

Pranzhu was informed about this by Gaidar at a rally, where representatives of the movements - the "self-defense of Odessa" and the local "automaidan" - demanded her resignation. At the same rally, unable to withstand the pressure of the crowd, Gaidar announced that she was not "holding on to her post" and announced her intention to leave it. But to leave Ukraine, as well as to leave the intention to do there political career, Gaidar did not.

In order to no longer have to publicly “remove the kokoshnik”, the politician decided the issue radically. In September 2016, Gaidar asked to revoke her citizenship. Thus, the career doors for Gaidar in Ukraine were thrown open again.

However, the reasons for the appointment of Gaidar to the post of adviser to Poroshenko are still not clear. Most political analysts agreed that Gaidar did not prove his effectiveness either in Kirov, or in Moscow, or in Odessa. In addition, an additional, albeit more emotionally colored factor in the unconvincing political figure Gaidar was the fact that both Belykh and Saakashvili ingloriously ended their activities. And if the ex-president of Georgia ended his governorship, albeit with accusations of embezzlement and violation of military censorship, but is still at large, then Belykh is waiting for a court verdict.

The deputy director of the Institute of the CIS countries believes that Maria Gaidar will not have any role in the political life of Ukraine.

“The girl is growing above herself, she has found herself,” commented the expert. “But it seems to me that she will not fit into this company, just as she did not fit into Saakashvili's company. It will be there formally, but will have no real political weight.”

The expert noted that this appointment may be a kind of signal to the West, which insists on liberal economic reforms for Ukraine. “Perhaps this is a signal to the West, with the help of which Ukraine will show that it will undertake economic reforms together with the daughter of a liberal economist, but nothing but a signal,” Volodymyr Zharikhin suggested.

The same opinion is shared by Vladimir, deputy head of the institute of the CIS countries: “She also needed to find a job, which is why Poroshenko appointed her as his freelance adviser, well, let her be.”

The expert also sees no political role for Gaidar in her new post. “Gaidar does not have any special qualifications to make political decisions, nor is he close to Ukraine. I think she will be just as superfluous as in Odessa, and if she wants to build democracy, then let her go to America, because Ukraine has its own specifics, ”said Yevseev.

Maria Gaidar, member of the Odessa Regional Council, has become a freelance adviser to the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. This was reported in the decree of the head of Ukraine on the official website.

In conversation with NSN the experts evaluated this appointment and also spoke about Maria Gaidar's previous work experience and its results. Director of the Kiev Center for Political Studies and Conflictology Mikhail Pogrebinsky stated that, as such, the post of presidential adviser, as well as other high-ranking officials, is not of particular value in Ukraine, since it is purely formal.

“The position of adviser has long been discredited in the broadest context. Take the [former] adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs - Gerashchenko, or Shkiryak, they are completely inadequate. They exist solely for the implementation of the complexes of the minister himself, which he does not allow himself to implement for various reasons. She [Gaidar] will speak the right words, but there will be no sense from her activities. Poroshenko does not listen to any advisers. He himself considers himself an adviser to himself, so the appointments are exclusively opportunistic and PR in nature. This makes me smile ironically - Poroshenko has such an adviser with a famous surname. It seems that he respects himself more from this, ”Pogrebinsky said.

He also said that all Gaidar's experience in state structures prior to his appointment did not bring any practical benefit to the Ukrainian people.

“All her attempts to realize political ambitions, pseudo-democratic plans in the social system, in healthcare, all this is a laughing stock for chickens. It is clear that nothing worked out, as, indeed, in other places where she worked. As far as I know, it has not shown any effectiveness anywhere. She is a PR person, and in this PR she achieves some success. She really turned out to be quite a prominent figure, as a result of which she received a post without having the relevant experience. I mean the post of deputy governor [of the Odessa region]. People were unhappy with her, there were protests. Ukrainian nationalists demanded that she be fired,” the expert shared.

In its turn political scientist Ivan Mezyuho confirmed the lack of political success and popularity of Maria Gaidar in this field.

“Maria Gaidar actually did not show herself in Ukrainian politics. Neither in Saakashvili's team nor in the Odessa Regional Rada did she become a prominent political figure. She has difficult situation, since she publicly renounced Russian citizenship and accepted Ukrainian. Ukrainian nationalists are inclined towards her in a negative way, for them she is still a Russian woman, a representative of a state hostile to them. And this stigma will not go away from her, ”said the interlocutor. NSN.

In his opinion, the appointment of Gaidar is a temporary measure, an attempt by Poroshenko to provide her with at least some political future.

“In fact, Petro Poroshenko, by appointing Gaidar as his freelance adviser, temporarily saves her from political non-existence. I don't think it will be really useful for the Ukrainian president. Her initial entry into Ukrainian politics was associated with the support of Mikheil Saakashvili. Today we know that he is publicly in a confrontation with Poroshenko. Many Ukrainian analysts have long assumed that Poroshenko is trying to turn Saakashvili into a tame oppositionist, but we know what kind of temper Saakashvili has. And the former Georgian president will not be able to be a tame opposition for a long time, sooner or later he will seriously step on the heels of Poroshenko. Therefore, I do not think that the same Saakashvili will approve the appointment of Gaidar, ”concluded the political scientist.

Recall that Maria Gaidar was a Russian and now Ukrainian political and public figure in the past. Daughter of the first Russian minister Finance Yegor Gaidar, in 2015, she took the citizenship of Ukraine, later in September 2016 she filed a petition to renounce Russian citizenship. Served as an adviser to the chairman of the Odessa Regional State Administration on social protection and health protection, then deputy head of the administration of the Odessa region for social issues.